Looking good, Louis! Feel your pain on the airbrush problems, seems to be a constant battle here because of the high humidity.

Canopy came out great, glad I was able to help a little on that one. For those who are wondering how that was done, here's the secret. RC modelers have been using a product called Monocote, manufactured by Top Flite, for years to cover airplanes with. It's a colored mylar, heat activated iron on material. Top Flite also makes self adhesive trim sheets to match the Monokote colors. So in this case, we used some white TF trim cut to proper width and length, stuck it on, Futured it and voila! Instant canopy framing! The sheets come in all the basic colors (white, red, blue, etc) and can be found at any good hobby shop that carries RC models or online.

John, @j-healy
Thanks for the compliments on the save... I was worried there for a while. I have to give full credit to the canopy and the inner lines to Jaime. @jetmex

This kit has been fighting me every step of the way. It started out with the wings being warped. That caused fit problems at the joint along the fuselage under the plane. Then I had the paint fiasco.

But this is a beautiful plane... I wish it went together easier that's all. I'm sure that if my kit was not warped, it would have been a much more enjoyable build.

Thanks again for stopping by.

Last night I completed the masking on the Panther. Here's a little trick that I use occasionally when masking off large areas. I simply cover the location to be masked with aluminum foil... Here you can see how it looks. I used the foil on the nose and tail sections.

Once everything was properly covered, I sprayed on the aluminum paint. I'm happy to say this time no problems were encountered...

After I let things dry a little, I unmasked the jet. I am getting excited here... so far, so good.

Pushing the envelope and my luck, I decided to spray on some clear acrylic "Future". I sprayed it a little thicker than I usually do. I didn't dilute it as much with rubbing alcohol as I typically do. I wanted it to really shine, so I rolled the dice... I will have to see how it looks in the morning.

Stand by for part 2...

Wow, that really does look good!

Thanks James ! @jamesb
I hope that I have turned the last corner and that I'm in the home stretch...

Tonight I added the larger decals for Brubaker's plane.

I used several still photos that were taken by pausing the movie when it came to a place where the Panther jet was in focus for a specific part of the airframe. This helped a lot, and I noticed a few small discrepancies with decal placement, when comparing the kit instructions and the various planes that were used in the movie.

Some of the bureau numbers were located in different places, as were the location of the "NAVY" and VF-192 markings. These were located in different stations or fuselage bulkheads on the various planes and models.


The movie has several planes (and possibly a few models) that are marked as Brubaker's #209. The markings are a little different on each one.


I still have to apply the smaller stencils. There are quite a few of them !

The canopy is completed now. It has a wrap around style decal that shows the enclosure release.

I also added the #9 decal to the main landing gear outer door.

I'll have to go back and do a little touch up work with the decals, as some of them have a little bit of silvering. I'll take care of this now before the planes gets another coat of clear acrylic. I noticed in these close up photos, (after I posted them), that some of the edges of a few decals are lifted a little.

I also have a lot of lint on the model from pressing the decals down with a warm moistened paper towel.

If things go well tomorrow, I'll try to add the smaller stencils and give it another coat of Future acrylic clear.

It's getting really close to being done now.

As always, comments are encouraged.

Thanks, I'll check it out for the laptop without PS Elements.